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Missouri Public Records

Friday, January 10, 2014

By Ben Kingsley


Missouri has become an open state after the Freedom of Information Act was in place. This has made the public records Missouri generates for its people available for request any time that they need such documents. These documents include, but are not limited to: birth, marriage, death, divorce as well as criminal records.

Most of the family-related files: birth, death, marriage and divorce, are used when doing genealogy research. Such documents are used to prove one's identity. However, each still has its own unique function. For example, death certificates are required when claiming the insurance of the deceased. Marriage and divorce licenses are used when dealing with transactions that would verification about the marital status of an individual. Criminal records, on the other hand are used when conducting a background check. Employers refer to the criminal history of an individual to make sure they have clean records.

A public document would contain the name of the involved individual. The document would focus on information that is related to the type of document it is. Death certificates contain details about the death of a person. Marriage records would then have only the information about the marriage of a couple. Divorce license would contain the details about the separation of a married couple. The records of the crimes that an individual has committed are found on a criminal record.

The documents may have been opened to the public but access to it is allowed if the one who requested it is the person on the record or their immediate families. A public document also has the basics of the incident. There is information that remains private only to the person involved. An example would be the reason why the couple decided to separate. This particular information is not displayed on the public divorce record to protect the privacy of the divorcees. Another would be the witnesses of a crime is not indicated on the public document to protect them from potential harm.

There are guidelines that should be followed in getting a copy of any of the public documents in Missouri. One has to pay corresponding fees in order to get the needed document. Records of birth, death, marriage and separation from 1909 up to the present are the only documents that the state can release to the people. One can get copies of those documents at the Vital Statistics office or the county where such event was registered. The criminal records of Missouri have to be requested at the Department of Public Safety. A request form has to be submitted with the basic information of the record being requested. This can somehow help speed up the process. One can also send a mail request to the appropriate offices.

Online retrieval of government public records in the state of Missouri is now allowed. This made the retrieval process easier and fast. A lot of websites now offer to search for the records for you. One has the option to do the search for free or to pay for the search. The cost would be higher than doing the search at the office but people prefer this because of convenience.




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